Month: October 2009

By B. R. Gowani

The joy of a colored president heading the US after 232 years since its inception proves transitory when the reality of his policies reveals the illusion.

So many people of so many colors and of so many beliefs had so many hopes from the author of “The Audacity of Hope” that for a while it seemed that President Barack Obama would actually do something about the pressing issues within and without the United States. It was foolish to indulge in such thoughts of hope.

One cannot deny that when Obama took oath on January 20, George Bush had left him an empty piggy bank — US was a totally bankrupt country by then. One has also to remember that on the foreign front he inherited Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Not to forget the plight of Palestinians who lost their land to the Jews in 1948 on which the State of Israel was created.

It is almost 3000 days now since US began the war in Afghanistan, over six and a half years since it first attacked Iraq, a couple of years of direct involvement in Pakistan, and the verbal and other harassment of Iran is on the rise. Now — Obama is being asked to send more troops to Afghanistan!

Domestically, Obama is not doing much to lift the downtrodden people in the US, many of whom are resorting more and more to gathering pennies for groceries or addictions (smoking and drinking), which should make the conservatives and white racists happy. This should make the conservatives happy because it does not have to bail them out and can continue bailing out the big looters only. But that is not the case. The attacks against him grow more vehement and virulent. Nobody can outdo Fox TV and so it has to be in the forefront.

Can Obama Re-emerge?

It is not quite an year that Obama has been in power and yet it is not difficult to see that he will have a tough time getting re-elected. On the one hand, the racist elements will do their best to block his second term, and on the other, his own policies are such that he is digging himself into a political grave.

But then, anything is possible in politics; and a politician can do anything to make it possible. Obama can re-emerge a Clinton style re-emergence: walking out of the political grave as a vampire. Obama will have to hire Republican advisors the way Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris and advocated “triangulation.”

This is the only foreseeable way Obama can re-emerge. But the tragedy is that this colored vampire will have no blood left to suck: the poor are absolutely kaput.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Published by Michael Beckel

A new collaborative investigation by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics has found that many of the major players in the health insurance reform debate have hit members of Congress with a one-two punch of campaign contributions from at least 10 of their hired, outside lobbyists on top of donations from their employees or political action committees.

Since January 2007, more than 500 individual lobbyists who fit these criteria donated roughly $2.8 million to 61 members of Congress who also received about $1.9 million from the companies’ PACs or employees. These lobbyists represented 25 major health care and health insurance organizations.

Here is a table of the top Senate recipients of these contributions. (Read more about the methodology here. )

Recipient From Clients From Lobbyists – Overall – Total

John McCain (R-Ariz.) $427,530 – $473,400 – $900,930
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) $276,050 – $237,722 – $513,772
Max Baucus (D-Mont.) $252,750 – $200,899 – $453,649
Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) $116,750 – $108,778 – $225,528
Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) $56,950 – $130,808 – $187,758
Mark Udall (D-Colo.) $76,025 – $79,150 – $155,175
Mark Warner (D-Va.) $46,650 – $84,450 – $131,100
Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) $47,200 – $83,420 – $130,620
Mary Landrieu (D-La.) $35,800 – $67,000 – $102,800
Patty Murray (D-Wa.) $32,800 – $59,500 – $92,300
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) $22,500 – $55,950 – $78,450
Susan Collins (R-Maine) $28,300 – $40,916 – $69,216

Among the 61 recipients of these joint contributions are 11 senators who sit on the 23-member Senate Finance Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Baucus ranked as the third highest recipients of such contributions, accepting about $201,000 from 109 lobbyists representing 11 health-related organizations, plus an additional $252,750 from the lobbying clients’ employees or PACs. (The Sunlight Foundation illustrates these contributions, pictured in the image above, in graphic form here.)

Four other Democratic senators on the Finance committee also received such contributions: Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Deborah Stabenow (D-Mich.). These lawmakers combined received roughly one-sixth of Baucus’ haul — averaging about $19,800 in contributions per person from these clients and their external lobbyists during the two-and-a-half year period studied.

On the other side of the aisle, 60 percent of the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee were found to have accepted campaign contributions from these major health-related organizations and their outside lobbyists.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) received the most in such contributions, with $130,620 from these lobbyists and their clients, followed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who received $78,450. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) round out the list of GOP recipients.

These Republican lawmakers received an average of $67,700 per person from these clients and their external lobbyists during the two-and-a-half year period studied.

Politicians With Tough Re-Election Contests Also Made the List

OS

By Daisy Hernández

The new film has been attacked for racist stereotypes, but it’s still worth watching.

It’s hard to know whether to love or hate the new film set in South Africa by director Neill Blomkamp. It’s racist, yes. It has a white man as the anti-hero, yes. But why is it so compelling?

Critics have mostly praised Blomkamp for turning the usual plotline of “mean aliens invading with force” on its head. District 9 is the story of aliens from another galaxy who arrive malnourished in Johannesburg, where they are forced to live in a refugee camp alongside Nigerian immigrants. Tensions simmer for 20 years between aliens and native Black South Africans, so that when the film opens the Multi-National United corporation is being paid to move the aliens to another refugee camp, further away. The protagonist—Wikus van der Merwe —is the white anti-hero, an awkward bureaucrat who’s trying to carry out the government-approved and corporate-led relocation.
So far so good, right?

But parts of the blogosphere, and at least my own FaceBook wall, have lit up with justified and spirited attacks on the film for its stereotypical portrayals of black people, specifically of Nigerians. They are depicted in District 9 as cannibalistic gangsters who exploit the poor aliens and trade in illegal weapons. Blomkamp, who’s white and grew up in Johannesburg, openly told Salon magazine that he wanted to portray the Nigerian gangs as they really are in contemporary South Africa, and he wasn’t going to let political correctness get in the way. Thanks, Blomkamp.

District 9 also has the dominant message that’s heard routinely in the evening news and on conservative blogs about immigrants and blacks: they hate each other.

In Blomkamp’s sci-fi film, this hatred manifests when, in mock news coverage, black South Africans take to the streets demanding that the aliens be placed in someone else’s backyard. White people, by contrast, are featured in the film as experts, liberals really, who are sympathetic in a clinical way toward the aliens.

Watching these fictional scenes is reminiscent of the media coverage from New Orleans months after Hurricane Katrina, when the headlines screamed that so-called illegal aliens were arriving to take jobs from native blacks. While Blomkamp has said that the film is satire, this subtle point about racial relations is such a part of the media norm that most audience members, I’m afraid, will miss it.

Given the film’s bloodthirsty Nigerians, its hateful black South Africans and the malnourished aliens, what, then, makes District 9 worth watching?

Wikus, the white anti-hero.

Played superbly by Sharlto Copley, Wikus is the petty bureaucrat whose job it is to evict the aliens. But when he finds himself in the middle of an accident, Wikus becomes overnight a fugitive, one that’s being hunted by his own company and its private military. It is this white character’s emotional journey that makes District 9 such a moving and, in the end, memorable film.

Wikus is familiar to audiences. He’s nerdy and trying to exude an authority he doesn’t possess. He’s the type of man who wakes up, goes to the office, comes home to his lovely blond wife and, once in awhile, probably laments the sad state of the aliens and Nigerians while shaking his head and digging into his home-cooked dinner.

We’ve all worked with a Wikus or at least ridden the bus with him. He means well; it’s just that he’s…an idiot, though a good-hearted one. He does what he’s told without question, but he’s not malicious or mean-spirited.

And this is the frightening part.

CL

Leaders of the G20 group of the world’s most powerful countries pledged to bring the world economy out of recession when they met in London in April.

As they meet in Pittsburgh, five months later, just how far have their governments gone in meeting some of their key commitments?

In April, headlines trumpeted a $1.1 trillion deal to help countries fight the economic crisis. Much of this funding was to be directed toward the International Monetary Fund.

* The G20 has succeeded in increasing the IMF’s lending capacity by $500bn to $750bn. The target was only met earlier this month after the EU increased its initial pledge of about $100bn to $178bn. Only a tiny fraction of this ($2.3bn) has so far been allocated

* The IMF has allocated an additional $250bn worth of reserves to member countries that can be tapped when needed. Around $100bn has been allocated to developing countries

* The IMF has also approved its first major sale of gold since 2000 to raise money for additional financing for poor countries. The sale of 403 metric tonnes of gold should raise $13bn – more than the $6bn asked for by the G20

* The G20 also pledged to help boost trade by providing $250bn worth of financing, with $50bn expected to come from the World Bank. The G20 says that $65bn has been taken up so far. For its part, the World Bank has only received commitments of $7.8bn from donors
* The G20 said it would support an increase in lending to poor countries of at least $100bn through multilateral development banks (MDBs). The G20 says MDBs are planning to lend an extra $110bn this year but concrete figures are hard to come by and it’s not clear if this is from fresh or existing funding.

G20 governments pledged a total of $5tn in stimulus measures to boost their own economies, predicting that the extra cash would increase global economic output by 4% by the end of 2010.

However, few countries have detailed exactly how much they have spent and the IMF’s own estimate is slightly more cautious at 2% of GDP in 2009 and 1.5% of GDP in 2010.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that more than half of the $5tn has yet to be committed and has warned against switching off “the economic life support”.

However, the debate in Pittsburgh is likely to turn to how the the global economy can wean itself off the extra support now that there are signs of a recovery.

There are also fears that increased public spending could jeopardise any rebound given high levels of government debt and the deficits they have created in some countries.

BBC

Self-Described Gypsy Who Wants To Open Shop Says Law Is Biased

By Rick Rojas

Nick Nefedro didn’t need to have his palm read or look to Tarot cards to know that his plan to work as a fortuneteller in Bethesda would fail. His fate was already written: Montgomery County says it is illegal to make money from forecasting the future.

But Nefedro, who says he is a Gypsy, is determined to change that. He has enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union in his year-long fight to overturn the law that calls his livelihood fraudulent. He argues that fortunetelling is part of his heritage and that prohibiting him from working as a fortuneteller amounts to discrimination.

“I really want my business here, and I feel like they don’t have the right to discriminate against me,” Nefedro, 40, said.

He said the law is nothing more than persecution of Gypsies, who have long been stigmatized as nomadic thieves and con artists.
“Gypsies do exist, and they are not criminals,” he said, adding that fortunetelling is “something we’ve been doing for thousands of years.”

The term “Gypsy” dates to the 16th century and has been used to describe a European ethnic group, also called the Romany, thought to have originated in India. They were nomadic and often persecuted as troublemaking vagabonds. Some descendants find the term and the stereotypes associated with it offensive.

Like his father, who had been a fortuneteller in the District in the 1980s, Nefedro turned the practice into a business. With family members, he has owned and operated a half-dozen fortunetelling businesses in the Los Angeles area and in Key West, Fla.
But he wanted to move closer to home. Born in the District, he spent much of his youth with friends and family in Bethesda.

Nefedro found a location to rent about two years ago and applied for a business license. He was denied. In May 2008, he filed a lawsuit, which he lost. Now, with the ACLU on board, he wants to continue the fight.

WP

Acting Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the October 2009 issue of Scientific American

By Mariette DiChristina

Better brains from a bottle?
Splashlight

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.”

In the opening of the classic 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron,” novelist Kurt Vonnegut depicted a future in which people who had been born superior in some way over “average” people could not use those gifts to take “unfair” advantage. The strong lugged handicapping weights, the beautiful wore hideous masks and the clever were not permitted to think for stretches longer than 20 seconds or so. “A little mental handicap radio” transmitted earsplitting sounds such as a buzzer, a 21-gun salute or a ball-peen hammer striking a milk bottle. In response, “thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.”

Gun-toting government agents enforced the legislated baseline of mediocrity. When dull but well-meaning Hazel suggests that her husband, George, remove a few lead balls from his “handicap bag,” he reminds her of the fines and why he mustn’t disobey anyway: “‘If I tried to get away with it,’ said George, ‘then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back in the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’” No, she wouldn’t.

The must-have standards in the real 2081 will likely differ from Vonnegut’s unhappy tale, but the desire to achieve them may be uncomfortably similar. Our society, too, seems to be transfixed by the goal of reaching an average—one that is “above average.” With cosmetic surgery, we sculpt our bodies to create an ideal of attractiveness. Athletes dip into the medicine cabinet to pump up muscles and speed. Is it any wonder that recent headlines bark about the possibility of taking pills to boost brainpower?

As senior writer Gary Stix writes in the cover story, “Turbocharging the Brain,” older workers feel the need to vie with agile younger minds, students are pressed to make good grades while pulling all-nighters, and multitaskers want to maintain focus. Pills offer a tantalizingly easy solution. But would such drugs actually be an effective means of sharpening thought, and would they be as relatively harmless over the long term as having the occasional cup of coffee? Click here for an exploration of the science of enhancing cognition—and the issues that it raises.

SA

I heard that in China, going back to one’s hometown is called tan qin (literally seeking out one’s parents or family). Chinese who made their fortunes overseas have played an important role supporting those they left back home.

Writer Romi Tan, a native of Tokyo, recounts a story about an ethnic Chinese resident in Japan who went home during the late 1970s in the book “Shin-Kakyo Ro-Kakyo” (New overseas Chinese, old overseas Chinese). It was co-authored with Liu Jie, a Beijing-born Waseda University professor, and published by Bungeishunju Ltd.

People in his hometown gave the man an enthusiastic reception with wining and dining that lasted three days and nights. But not only was he required to foot the bill for the party, he was also asked to pay for electric and sewage works and ended up forking out a total of 4 million yen. Still, he felt happy that he could support his native country. Patriotic overseas Chinese serve as a bridge for foreign investment in China.

The People’s Republic of China celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding Thursday. Its history is marked by a period of liberation and confusion followed by opening and growth. Compared with the time Tan’s acquaintance spent a fortune in his hometown, China’s per capita gross domestic product has grown about 15-fold.

On Oct. 1, 1949, Mao Tse-tung appeared with his hair neatly styled in Tiananmen and proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in front of hundreds of thousands of people who had gathered in the square.

After the nation overcame humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, starting with the First Opium War, it was the moment new China’s experiment began. Mao continued: “We will create our own civilization and happiness and work to promote world peace and freedom.”

China has become affluent. But now, rifts and antagonism are spreading among its 1.3 billion people. Gaps are becoming wider between urban and rural areas and between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities. Under a single-party dictatorship, a ray of hope has yet to appear in such problematic areas as human rights and freedom of expression. How are people who won China’s national foundation after a long struggle viewing its bright and dark sides from heaven?

Rural communities where the Chinese Communist Party originated are producing countless poor migrant workers, while the rich and privileged who rode the crest of the market economy enjoy overseas travels. This is China’s reality but I don’t think it is what the founding fathers of modern China envisioned.

Could it be that China has intentions but lacks the skills to accomplish its ideals, or is it lacking in both? Its nation-building endeavor still has a long way to go.

AH

By Asghar Vasanwala

Ghalib, his Ghazals, his poems, his genius, and his wits have always fascinated millions of Urdu lovers including myself. Those who want to read my previous work please send me an email request; I will email back my previous explanations just for asking.

This is my 54th installment. I have received excellent response from lot of friends; both Urdu and non-Urdu speakers. Please know that this is my own, Asghar Vasanwala’s, work and not a forwarding of someone else’s work as some of you thought. Please forward this to your friends. Also please send me your comments/complements. I will appreciate if you forward my email addresses of your Urdu/non-Urdu friends.

Here is today’s verse (sh’er) & its explanation in Urdu, Gujarati, and English

Please do visit my Ghalib website for past issues and more. I guarantee you’ll enjoy

These are 4th & 5th verses of Ghalib’s 17th Ghazal

Moj-e-sarab-e-dasht-e-vafa ka na pooch haal
Do not get me started on dunes of love mirage

Har zarra, misl-e-johar-e-tegh, aab-dar tha
Every grain of its sand was like a spirited, sharp sward

sarab=mirage dasht=desert vafa=faithfulness (to love) Zarra=grain, particle
misl=like johar=sharpness, mettle, shine tegh=sward aab-dar=sharpened, quenched

Meaning 4th verse:

My friend: Do not ask me about the wilderness of love and its mirage. Devotion to love is a mirage that attracts thirsty with its illusion of water and greenery; then kills him of thirst and exhaustion. Know this much: every grain of sand dune of this mirage is like a spirited sward. If so, how could someone putting a foot in the wilderness of love can save himself. It will ultimately take toll of his life

Finer aspects of this verse: Ghalib has likened sand dunes with waves in ocean, which is unique. Words wave, mirage, quenching, and aab-dar, all have connection with water, a terrific selection of words.

Kam jante the hum bhi gham-e-ishq ko, par ab
Inexperienced me had a reduced idea about perils of love

Dekha, to kam hu-e pe gham-e-rozgar tha
I realized: when love sorrows ebb, mundane sorrows surround

Gham-e-ishq=love perils Gham=trouble, sorrow, pain gham-e-rozgar=sorrows of livelihood

Meaning 5th verse:

Having zero inexperience in love, I underestimated its perils. However, when my love ebbed, all other livelihood problems surrounded me. Then only, I realized that no worldly perils came close to love pain; love pain rules supreme. In one other verse Ghalib says, “Gham-e-ishq na hot to ghame-e-rozgar hota,” meaning if love problems had not befallen on me, livelihood problems would have surrounded me. It is better having one sorrow, that is, love, rather than having millions of mundane sorrows.

When one chases his goal with single mindedness, he forgets the world and its problems. However, when one fails, or gives up that goal, he feels the vacuum. He realizes that now he has to face other challenges, i.e., the sorrows of world.

Finer aspects of this verse: Ghalib does not repeat words in a verse. In this verse, Ghalib has repeated Kam and Gham. However, he uses both words as compound words and as phrases. Such usage is permitted.

For Urdu click here
For Gujarati click here

Asghar Vasanwala can be reached at asgharf@att.net